


Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Statistician

by whitefang (radialarch)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221B Ficlet, Crack, Gen, Humor, US elections 2012
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-09
Updated: 2012-11-09
Packaged: 2017-11-18 07:05:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/558209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radialarch/pseuds/whitefang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Silver">Nate Silver</a>, and it's election night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Statistician

**Author's Note:**

> Does this count as RPF? No idea.
> 
> ETA: If you're Nate Silver, sorry about this, thank you for your interest, and stop reading!  
> Kay, cool.

It’s 1:40 am and Sherlock is sprawled on the sofa. “Of course,” he groans, fingers flying over his laptop. “Florida. Although with the fiasco in 2000, you’d think they’d have been better prepared…”

“Florida?” John wanders into the living room, blinking sleep from his eyes. “What—are you watching the American elections?”

“Duty to my blog, John,” Sherlock says airily, and then raises an eyebrow as an email notification pops up. “Ah, excellent, more exit poll data,” he pronounces with a gleeful smile, the sort that John normally associates with murders.

“Your blog just has rubbish about tobacco ash on it,” John starts to point out, before realising that the site on Sherlock’s screen is not the familiar black-and-blue layout of the Science of Deduction. “‘fivethirtyeight’?” John squints at the URL. “What does that even mean?”

“Size of the US electoral college. It’s a completely nonsensical system of voting, of course, but makes for a rather catchy domain name.”

John frowns at the screen, littered with blue and red shapes. “So you’re…predicting their election results? You’re not even interested in politics _here_.”

“Not politics, John, _statistics_. Data. People are incredibly predictable. Oh, for—no!” He suddenly groans upon switching tabs. “Use a dictionary!”

John rolls his eyes and leaves Sherlock yelling at the screen about the definition of “bellwether”.

**Author's Note:**

> I...vaguely wanted to write an election fic? And then this happened. >.<
> 
> Nate Silver, in case you're unaware, is a statistician who runs [fivethirtyeight](http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/). He basically applies stats to poll results to come up with some [impressively accurate predictions](http://whitefang3927.tumblr.com/post/35190056655/mcheung-looks-like-nate-silver-nailed-it-50-for).


End file.
